Sex Education Delays Teen Sex, Study Finds

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Teens who receive formal sex education wait longer to have sex, a
new study finds — and when they do get around to doing the deed,
they're more likely than teens who haven't had sex ed to use
contraception.

The study couldn't fully tease out the differences between
abstinence-only sex education and sex education that also
includes discussion of birth control methods, but the researchers
wrote that contrary to some critics' beliefs, there is no
evidence that sex education encourages teens
to have sex sooner or to take more sexual risks.

The study, conducted by researchers from the reproductive health
research organization The Guttmacher Institute, used data from
the 2006 to 2008 National Survey of Family Growth. In this
survey, 4,691 participants, ages 15 to 24, told researchers
whether they had ever had formal instruction in "how to say no to
sex" and in "methods of birth control." The teens and young
adults also answered questions about their first experience with
vaginal sex.

Abstinence-only vs. comprehensive

The questions couldn't differentiate between comprehensive sex
education — which includes instruction on both how to delay sex
and the proper use of birth control — and abstinence-only
education, which focuses only on delaying sex until marriage.
That's because some abstinence-only programs do discuss birth
control in order to emphasize the failure rate of various
methods. The researchers couldn't be sure of the quality or
content of instruction, so the resulting
classifications of sex ed as "abstinence-only" or "with birth
control instruction" are tentative. [ Birth
Control Quiz: Test Your Knowledge ]

The results showed, however, that two-thirds of young women and
55 percent of young men received some sort of instruction on
birth control and abstinence before their first sexual
experience. About 20 percent said they only learned how to delay
sex, while 16 percent of females and 24 percent of males got no
sexual education at all.

The last group was the worst off when it came to risky sexual
behaviors. Of the students who had any type of sex education, 77
percent of women and 78 percent of men had sex before they turned
20. For young adults with no sexual instruction, those numbers
jumped to 86 percent and 88 percent, respectively.

In addition, students who had sex education were more likely to
use contraception during their first sexual encounter compared
with those who hadn't received sex ed. They also had "healthier
partnerships," being less likely to lose their virginity to
someone more than three years older or younger than themselves.
[ Teen
Pregnancy: A Winnable Public Health Battle? ]

The researchers found little difference on these contraception
measures between the abstinence-only group and the group who
received birth control instruction, although young women who had
received birth control instruction were more likely to protect
themselves by using condoms during their first intercourse. Other
studies have found that comprehensive sex education is better at
delaying vaginal sex and reducing teen pregnancy than
abstinence-only education; however, a 2010 study published in the
journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found
that abstinence education
can delay sex in young teens.

"It appears that talking with adolescents about sex — before they
first have sex — seems to be what is important, regardless of the
specific subject matter," the researchers wrote in
the new study published online March 7 in the Journal of
Adolescent Health.

The effectiveness of sexual education may depend, in part, on
where the students are. A recent study published in the Archives
of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found that sex ed is less
effective at
reducing teen birthrates in more conservative areas, perhaps
because instruction is not as high-quality. Attitudes toward
abortion may play a role in teen birthrates, too, the study
found, with teens in more conservative areas less willing or less
able to get the procedure, making them more likely to carry to
term.

The new Guttmacher study also turned up some alarming demographic
differences in sex education, with minority students and students
in lower-income families less likely to receive any sexual
education at all. For example, one-third of minority men received
no formal sex ed. Girls from lower-income families with
less-educated parents were also less likely than their better-off
counterparts to receive instruction on birth control.